Addiction Quotes

One of the first actions we take at Passages is to ruthlessly scrutinize, always under a doctor's supervision and care, the specific necessity of any mind- altering or mood-altering medications that our clients are taking. As soon as any non essential drugs are out of their systems, the feelings they were trying to suppress usually emerge. When that happens, we can see what symptoms the client was masking with drugs or alcohol.

~ Chris Prentiss

The treatment must fit the malady and the malady is not alcoholism or addiction, or addictive drugs and alcohol. Once the correct cause is diagnosed, healing will take place and hoped-for cure will come about.

~ Chris Prentiss

Whether the underlying cause of your dependency is a chemical imbalance, unresolved events from the past, beliefs you hold that are inconsistent with what is true, an inability to cope with current conditions, or a combination of these four causes, know this: not only are all the causes of dependency within you, but all the solutions are within you as well.

~ Chris Prentiss

The punishment approach and bad consequences approach to treatment is the kind of thinking that is prevalent in every residential substance abuse treatment center in the United States of which I'm aware.

~ Chris Prentiss

Dishonoring what we feel is an epidemic that has us self-medicating as a culture and trying to numb ourselves.

~ Abiola Abrams

The more you engage in any type of emotion or behavior, the greater your desire for it will become.

~ Chris Prentiss

There is no cell culture for depression. You can't see it on a bone scan or an x-ray. Not everyone with depression will show the same behavioral symptoms.

~ Chris Prentiss

I dye my jeans jet black once a week, but they never seem dark enough. I bleach my hair bright white twice a month but it never seems light enough. I drink two and a half bottles of champagne every night but I never seem drunk enough. And I know I’m not high enough until someone grabs my face to check my vision to see if I’m still responsive— And even then, I’m thinking to myself that I should probably do one more line, you know, just to be safe.

~ Kris Kidd

When the door to suicide opens it becomes a viable option that you never considered before, but, once ajar, it initiates an invasion strategy. Day by day thoughts blacken under the occupation of the new inhabitant. It becomes an all-consuming addiction that makes its home in your head and heart and, before you know it, the whole neighbourhood is talking and thinking about suicide. Eventually, the mind is overwhelmed by the conspiracy of its own darkness and begins to wage war against the body. At this point, the body is powerless.

~ B.g. Bowers

Those who nurse secrets, nurse a chaotic world of amplified silence.

~ B.g. Bowers

Day after day, more and more medications are prescribed for depression and addiction, assuming that these things run in our blood, when really they run in our patterns of awareness.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

I hope you see what you've done to me.

~ Matthew Little

You know when you send a text message to someone and you don't get a response right away, you feel depressed? You send a text message to someone you really like and you get a response right away you feel happy? You feel happy, the body, it creates the chemical dopamine, the dopamine, it goes through your blood and you become addicted to that dopamine rush, and you associate that dopamine rush with the happy feeling of receiving the text, and that's why you got people sending 3,000 fucking text messages a day, right, we're not even paying attention to what we're saying anymore it's just like a, like a morphine drip, right, it's like a dopamine drip! HAPPY BUTTONS! HAPPY BUTTONS! HAPPY BUTTONS! TIME TO PLAY WITH THE HAPPY BUTTONS!

~ Tom Green

It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.

~ Sherman Alexie

I never lie ― I am a blatantly truthful person about almost everything. My addiction (or disease as some call it) always lies. I have had very good relationships, but the addict in me always fucked them up. I fall in love quickly, it's a high that rivals drugs for a while. I am monogamous, but I always cheated with depression before the relationship fell apart. Addicts need best friends, healthy people need healthy relationships.

~ Emma Forrest

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre.

~ Andy Behrman

An intensely gripping narrative...expertly crafted and totally addictive...a must read!

~ Maggie Reese

Just as one goes on a fast or a body cleanse you owe it to yourselves to detox your mind, it will not be easy but easy never yielded lasting results.

~ Aysha Taryam

The distressing internal state is not examined: thefocus is entirely on the outside: What can Ireceive from the world thatwill make me feel okay, if only for a moment? Bare attention can showher that these moods and feelings have only the meaning and powerthat she gives them. Eventually she will realize that there is nothing torun away from. Situations might need to be changed, but there is nointernal hell that one must escape by dulling or stimulating the mind.

~ Gabor Maté

I love like a beaten child and I trust like an addict.

~ Kris Kidd

It takes a strong person to stand up to his or her fate and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of freedom and success, but I believe in you.

~ Pax Prentiss

He in any form was a drug to the addiction of being desired while she was always wanted.

~ Pushpa Rana

Let’s remind ourselves that to be compassionate and forgiving doesn’t mean we are endorsing dysfunctional behaviour. On the contrary, it’s essential the harm that was inflicted upon us is properly validated and grieved. Forgiveness isn’t an intellectual concept or an airy-fairy idea. It’s a painstaking process. To be compassionate and to forgive mean we are gradually letting go of poisonous, toxic feelings that are trapped in our minds and bodies.

~ Christopher Dines

What if I'm so broken I can never do something as basic as feed myself? Do you realize how twisted that is? It amazes me sometimes that humans still exist. We're just animals, after all. And how can an animal get so removed from nature that it loses the instinct to keep itself alive?

~ Amy Reed

Their boots were black and shiny and your treasures gleamed like stars,Bones from deep down in the fertile crescent.

~ John Darnielle

I'm so in love with you I can't stand up.

~ Kim Addonizio

And finallythe glass that contains and spills this stuff continuallywhile the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gathersup empties, gives back the drinker's own face. Who knows what it looks like;who cares whether or not it was young once, or ever lovely,who gives a shit about some drunk rising to stagger towardthe bathroom, some man or woman or even lostangel who recklessly threw it all over—heaven, the ether,the celestial works—and said, Fuck it, I want to be human?

~ Kim Addonizio

The process of recovering from addictiveness happens at a deeper level of consciousness and through feeling our pain without using old addictive fixes. There is no escaping that getting in touch with our original pain is the touchstone to mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

~ Christopher Dines

In the grief that comes with recognizing what happened to us, we often feel there is nowhere to turn for solace…We do things to keep it away, such as becoming overly busy or using drugs or alcohol to numb our feelings. When we are caught up in resistance, we do not feel hope, but when we surrender to our sadness fully, hope trickles in.

~ Maureen Brady

I deleted your number. Although I know the tired digits by heart, scout's honor, pinky promise.I am trying to talk myself out of every emotion I'm having, and of course, it is failing to a fault.I'm still sad, I'm still mad, I'm still heartbroken, I miss you.

~ Elizabeth Brooks

Out of all the addictions in the world, Attention is slowly but surely becoming one of the most dangerous.

~ Saahil Prem

Teen addiction to social media is a new extension of typical human engagement. Their use of social media as their primary site of sociality is most often a byproduct of cultural dynamics that have nothing to do with technology, including parental restrictions and highly scheduled lives. Teens turn to, and are obsessed with whichever environment allows them to connect to friends. most teens aren't addicted to social media; if anything, they're addicted to each other.

~ Danah Boyd

Don't drive a car in the dream, else you won't drive it on earth. Don't wish to become, else you won't become. Don't associate with fools, else your ancestors will be insulted. Don't be addicted to wine, else your pocket will be empty. Don't be drunk, else you'll be attacked.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Friends with benefits? More than friends? Don't sample the goodies unless you're willing to risk addiction and withdrawal.

~ Ann Landers

What if there were health food stores on every corner in the hood, instead of liquor stores!?

~ Supanova Slom

Be honest with the Lord. If you’re afraid, say so. If you’re feeling abandoned, tell Him. He already knows every sin you’ve committed and He loves you anyway. Confess honestly. Beg for help. Converse with the Lord in reverence and respect, but not as if you were approaching a distant, uncaring being. Nothing could be further from the truth. All you have to do is reach out to feel the grasp of Christ’s hand.

~ Toni Sorenson

I ended up going into this big art historical argument.' [Barry Blinderman] invoked, for example, Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece, painted in the sixteenth century for a monastery where monks cared for people with skin diseases—so the suffering Christ in that painting shows symptoms of skin disease. 'It’s because he’s the man of sorrows,' Blinderman argued. 'He takes on the suffering of the world. So if Christ were to appear physically today, one of the sicknesses he would have to take on would be drug addiction.

~ Cynthia Carr

Human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with whatever we can find … It is disconnection that drives addiction.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

Compassion is the most powerful tool you can have when it comes to healing addictions of any kind. Put simply, what your partner needs most from you is compassion.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford

No one consciously chooses addiction to a substance or behavior over his partner. There are always reasons – powerful ones – why a person retreats into addiction.

~ Christopher Kennedy Lawford